


scenes from a pensieve

by orphan_account



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4264899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taehyun is the first Nam sorted into Slytherin since the founding of Hogwarts. Unfortunately, Slytherin doesn't seem to want him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	scenes from a pensieve

Taehyun’s mother sends him a broomstick to congratulate him, the week after he’s sorted into Slytherin. It’s a consolation prize, and not a very good one. The broom is a Bluebottle, one of the ugly, unpopular models from three years ago. It's closer to the mops they use to clean the floors of Hogwarts than a Quidditch broom.

A month later it will buck him out of the sky during his first flying lesson, and the other Slytherin boys will laugh and point, and Taehyun will wipe the mud from his mouth and lay panting on the grass, rather than launch himself at them across the Quidditch pitch.

Instead he will send his mother an owl thanking her for the broom, telling her how smoothly it flies, how a fourth year saw him practicing and told him that he should try out for the team next year, that he might make Chaser if he keeps working at it. His mother’s owl is named Rowena, because his mother was a Ravenclaw, and her mother before that, the Nams have been Ravenclaws since the first day Hogwarts opened its doors, but his mother wrapped Taehyun’s broom in silver and emerald packaging and Taehyun will keep it in his possession for years and years, until it’s a heap of twigs and bark at the bottom of his trunk.

 

“You’re not very good at Transfiguration,” says Jinwoo, “but that’s okay, because neither am I.”

Taehyun meets Jinwoo in October. By then, he’s acclimated to Slytherin House, or, more accurately, Slytherin House has acclimated to _him_. The older students still pronounce his name, Nam, like a curse, barbed as it is with light magic and war wounds, but they mostly go out of their way to ignore him now that they’ve realized he’s about as much of a threat as a Puffskein.

The other first years tried to push him around for a while - frog spawn in his shoes, his essays spelled blank every time he went to turn them in - but he let them get in a few solid punches behind the Herbology house, and that seemed to satiate them. Now they avoid him, or else give him vague nods of solidarity when other Houses can see them. None of them are his _friends_ , though. Taehyun doesn’t have any friends, until Jinwoo.

They’re paired up together in Transfiguration, because Jinwoo is the worst Hufflepuff student, and Taehyun is the worst Slytherin student, and, the professor decides, if they’re going to fail they might as well fail _spectacularly_. Their assignment this week is to turn a quill into a slightly fluffier quill. After about an hour and a half, Taehyun and Jinwoo have succeeded in stripping their quill of all of its feathers, and turning it green.

“Maybe,” Jinwoo says, poking the end of the quill experimentally with the tip of his wand, “if we kind of… _think_ it bigger?”

“What, have you been thinking it something different this whole time?” Taehyun asks, watching with a kind of horrified amusement as the quill catches on fire.

“I wasn’t really thinking about it at all - hey, do you think that’s the problem?” Jinwoo pokes the quill again, seemingly unconcerned at the rapidly growing flames, which are now at level with both their faces.

“I mean,” Taehyun says, as a chimney of smoke begins to billow towards the ceiling, “we definitely Transfigured it. Sort of.”

Smoke fills the classroom. Jinwoo and Taehyun smile at one another, and their classmates flee, terrified, into the corridors.

  

The Potions professor watches Taehyun like a hawk. “Your mother was never good at this,” she tells Taehyun, “and I don’t like to judge blood by blood but…” She trails off, gesturing to the red slime coagulating at the bottom of Taehyun’s cauldron.

“Is that… wrong?” Taehyun asks. “Yes - yes, of course it is,” he says, looking around the classroom, which is hazy with golden fumes and the scent of burning amber. “How do I…”

“Think,” the Potions professor says softly, leaning down so that her body shields Taehyun’s cauldron from his fellow classmates, who have started to peer across the tables and smirk, “Nam, _think_. Potions is magic, just as much as a charm or a song. What feels right? What feels like it will make this potion _sing_?”

Taehyun looks at the heaps of ingredients covering his work-bench, lavender and oak leaves and half-crushed snail shells. His hand hovers over a pile of dried kelp; the professor watches him, face impassive. He shakes his head _no_ , and stares into the red mass at the bottom of the cauldron, waiting. Listening.

After a moment he leans over, and picks up a vial of crushed fairy wings. Delicately, precisely, he pours them into his cauldron in a fine and shimmering stream. The cauldron steams, and buckles, and Taehyun braces himself against the desk. Sparks fly, and as Taehyun leans in he can smell, impossibly, burnt amber.

When he looks up the Potions Master is walking away. His classmates are glaring at him, their eyes narrowed with a kind of hate he can't name yet. 

 

Taehyun gets in more fights behind the Herbology classroom. This time it’s second years, who have heard about his family name and his grandmother’s exploits during the Second War. These Slytherins are big and strong, and have friends who can hold his arms behind his back. Jinwoo tries to heal his cheek, but he only ends up making the bruises spread, so that half of his face is blotched purple. Taehyun refuses to go to the Hospital Wing, and when he goes home for the summer holidays his mother cries for two hours upon seeing him. His grandmother clasp him on the back and tells him, in a low and half-shattered voice, how proud she is, Slytherin or not.

Taehyun finds his grandfather’s Potions book. He had been a Healer, and on his eight birthday Taehyun’s mother gave him the medal the Ministry awarded his grandfather after the war, in honor of the acts he’d performed in the Name of Light. Taehyun traces his grandfather’s spidery handwriting, mouthing the names of herbs and roots and flowers he has never seen before. _To cure a bleeding heart_ , he reads; _to bring summer to the dying._

In September Taehyun tucks his grandfather’s Potions book at the bottom of his trunk, and keeps it hidden away beside his bed for the rest of his Hogwarts years.

  

He tells his mother, “I want to be good.”

She smiles, a little sadly, and straightens his tie. Her fingers linger over the silk, green and silver, and when she presses him tight to her chest her body seems to shudder. “I know you do, darling,” she says, and helps him lift his trunk onto the train.

 

Third year, Jinwoo makes Hufflepuff Chaser. Taehyun tries out for the Slytherin team, but his broom gives out fifth lap around the Quidditch pitch, and the Captain has had it out for him since first year, anyway. It doesn’t really bother Taehyun - he’s more interested in Potions than Quidditch these days, and besides, he can get back at the Slytherin team by helping Jinwoo train. That’s how he meets Seunghoon.

Their families have known each other for ages. The Lees and Nams are part of the wizarding _Elite_ , Taehyun tells Jinwoo, the kind of family who stood witness to the first whispered spark of magic cast at the dawn of time.

“Our families never really liked each other, though,” he says, making little zig-zags in the air as Jinwoo ignores him, “one of my ancestors left someone from on their side at the altar, or one of their people was a Dark Lord in some twelfth century war and we locked away their magic forevermore, or something like that - you know how it is, this stuff is always so hazy.” He gives Jinwoo a lazy smile.

“Shut up,” Jinwoo says, “and throw the Bludger at my head.”

Taehyun throws the Bludger at his head. It’s two days before the Ravenclaw - Hufflepuff match, the first game of the season and Jinwoo’s first, ever. He’s nervous, and, Taehyun thinks privately, rightfully so. The Ravenclaw Beater is a short, sturdy kid named Song, a fourth year who put three of his own teammates in the Hospital Wing last year. Jinwoo is fast on a broom, but he’d fall off for a gust of wind.

The Bludger zooms towards Jinwoo’s delicate, melon-soft head. Taehyun watches its trajectory, wincing, and wondering if killing his best friend will serve as proof he really does belong in Slytherin. Jinwoo turns his broom, maneuvering around the projectile, but the Bludger, anticipating his swerve, dives straight for his broomstick-

Seunghoons’s bat slams into the Bludger, hitting the ball with such force that it cracks clean in half. The Bludger sails off towards the goal posts with a wistful screech, and Seunghoon stares sadly at the broken bottom half of his bat.

“I keep doing that,” the Hufflepuff Beater says, almost wistfully. “Now I owe Kang five galleons.” And then, looking up: “Hey, Nam, isn’t that how your great-great-great Grandma killed my great-great-great-great Aunt?”

“Sure is,” Taehyun says, grinning, “wanna give it another go?”

Seunghoon chucks the broken bat at Taehyun’s head. Taehyun swerves out of the way, and urges his own broom forward. He races Seunghoon around the pitch for ten minutes until, finally, with the elation of a Seeker finally laying hands upon an evasive Snitch, he tackles Seunghoon into the ground and rubs his face into the damp, fresh green grass.

 _Mother_ , he owls, _I have made friends with a Lee._

 _Son,_ his mother replies, _expect your grandmother’s Howler shortly. Much love._

Both Seunghoon and Taehyun’s grandmothers send their Howlers the exact same morning, much to the amusement of Jinwoo, and Jinwoo alone.

 

 Taehyun crushes together gillyweed and nasturtium. He stirs their juices together, three times counterclockwise. Sparks emerge from his cauldron, pink and gold and finally, a dusky twilight blue. Taehyun smiles, and leans in, and can smell the sunset.

The other Slytherins watch him with pinched faces, and trip him on their way to the Common Room.

  

Taehyun goes home with Jinwoo the summer before fifth year. He’s never been to a Muggle house - he’s gone down into the village with his mother, of course, and he went to the wedding of that aunt who married the - accountant? accordionist? He doesn’t understand Muggle professions - but he’s never seen a _real life Muggle family_ before. It’s nothing like he expects, and it’s utterly perfect.

They waste summer on the water, on the boat or in the surf. Jinwoo’s father teaches Taehyun how to haul up the nets, and Taehyun learns that ropes get heavier when they’re wet and when you don’t have a wand to levitate them. They take Gillyweed Taehyun stole from the Potions supply closet, and Jinwoo teaches Taehyun how to tell the Merpeople songs from the nearby dolphins. Jinwoo’s father feeds them fish on the deck of the his boat, slit open with a knife, not a wand, and Taehyun watches the way Jinwoo watches his father, and wishes he felt that much pride for anything in his life, anything at all.

He doesn’t tell Jinwoo thank you, not that summer, not ever, but he smiles more that next year, and he thinks that maybe Jinwoo knows.

  

There are seven fifth years, and six beds. Taehyun knows, from the way that they watch him, that he is supposed to ask. Instead he smiles, and says, “I better go tell the House Elves they made a mistake.”

They hold Taehyun down and hit him, no wands, just fists and fists and fists. It’s because he’s in Slytherin, he thinks in between the bruisings, or because his grandmother destroyed so many of their families, or maybe because they see just how hard he tries not to care.

“Family name can’t save you now, Nam,” one of them whispers, mouth on his ear and voice almost raw, “your whore of a mum can’t save you now-”

The world flashes a bright green before Taehyun’s eyes, and when he comes to himself three of them lie on the floor, unconscious. A fourth cowers behind his bed, watching Taehyun with an expression so terrified Taehyun himself is almost scared. The remaining three have run to their Head of House, who looks at Taehyun with a disappointed, sad expression. Taehyun himself feels no remorse, except for when he’s banned from after hours trips to the dungeons.

“I expected more from you, Nam,” the professor says, and he sounds tired, more than angry, “but I suppose - I supposed you’re a Slytherin after all.”

That night, he sleeps with his curtains spelled shut. He can feel their eyes upon him, though, and points his wand outwards, towards the room, towards their bodies. He wonders what killing curses sound like, and then, what poison tastes like.

 

 _I had thought_ , his mother writes, _that you might rise above your house. We tried to overlook your Sorting, Taehyun, but this -_

_This behavior does not befit our House. You do not befit a Nam._

 

A scout for the Wimbourne Wasps approaches Seunghoon after the first match of the year, and asks him if he’ll consider coming to their training camp the next summer. Seunghoon, smile stretching cheek to cheek, agrees over and over again, and it’s not until later that night, after the celebrations are half-over, that he thinks to ask Jinwoo if he’s upset.

Jinwoo shrugs. “I’ve always planned on going into Care of Magical Creatures, anyway - I was telling Taehyun this summer, nobody’s really studied the mermaids near my island, I figure I can be the first wizard to record a meeting and get Order of Merlin just for showing up.”

Taehyun tries to detect even a hint of bitterness in his friend’s voice, but can’t find a single drop. He sees Seunghoon’s expression, and knows that the Beater is just as astonished as he is. Jinwoo peels the wrapper off of a Chocolate Frog and swallows the wriggling creature whole.

  

They spend their nights in the library, too late, technically, for it to be allowed. Seunghoon says it’s fine, that his Prefect badge means he’s allowed to bend the rules once and a while; Taehyun points out that it’s exactly because he does stuff like this that he’s on Prefect _probation_ (a new thing they invented, just for him). Seunghoon thinks about this, and takes five points from Slytherin.

They huddle near the restricted section, wands cast to Lumos and eyes heavy-lidded. OWLs are this year, and Jinwoo says they _have_ to get a head-start on studying. Taehyun and Seunghoon agree, straight-faced. They spend the whole night daring each other to go into the Restricted Section and open that one book, the one with all the chains and the cover that smells like rotting meat that some Ravenclaw seventh year said was made with the _body of a dead student._

Jinwoo moves to another table, staring down at his textbook with narrowed eyes and pursed lips, until he gets too scared and has to move back to their table so that the goblins that haunt the stacks won’t come and murder him.

“That’s prejudiced,” Taehyun says, leaning over the advanced Potions textbook he’s grabbed from the stacks, “goblins would never haunt you, they’d just rob your corpse and leave you there.”

“Now who’s being prejudiced,” Seunghoon murmurs. Taehyun sticks out his tongue at the Hufflepuff, who scowls back. “Why are you studying, anyway? Studying is for _nerds_ and _Chasers_.”

Jinwoo swats at the two of them with his Ancient Runes textbook. Seunghoon, with his Quidditch reflexes, dodges; Taehyun is hit squarely in the back of his head, and will whine about it for the rest of term.

“I’m trying to figure out a project I can work on over the summer,” he tells Seunghoon, moving over to show him the convoluted Potions instructions, “Professor Choi recommended I try this book. It’s about, uh,” and he kind of blushes, although it’s too dark for Seunghoon to see, “healing and dreams. Like, making people feel good. When they’re sick. Uh.”

Seunghoon doesn’t laugh. Instead, he leans over, staring at the textbook as though he’s genuinely interested. Taehyun realizes after a moment that he really _is_ , and feels something warm and a little bit cramped twist up in his chest. “That’s really cool, Nam,” his friend says, “I didn’t know you were serious about this kind of thing.” He looks up, grinning, and it’s as though he’s actually proud of Taehyun. “This is really, really great.”

Taehyun doesn’t know what to say, and so he stays still, frozen in the dark as Seunghoon examines the textbook some more, and then reaches over to tug on Jinwoo’s hair and dare him to go stand in the Restricted Section for five seconds; he’s silent on the walk down the staircase, and as they part ways near the dungeon, and he’s even silent as he slides into bed, the snores and sleepy grunts of his fellow Slytherin fifth years drowning out even the merest whimper he could make.

His skin is hot, and his heart is pounding almost too hard to bear, and he realizes, then, that no one has ever been proud of him; that he’s never had a friend smile at him genuinely, and tell him that he’s _good_.

Taehyun doesn’t sleep that night.

 

He spends the summer writing to his Potions professor and brewing potions out of rose hips. His grandmother asks him what he wants to do when he leaves Hogwarts, and he unconsciously touches his grandfather’s medal, which he’s taken to wearing around his neck. Her eyes track his movement, and she smiles at him, softly and then fiercely, crushing him into a hug that could break his body in half if he wasn’t six inches taller than her.

“You’re a good boy, Taehyun,” his grandmother whispers, “you’re a good boy”. She holds him close, and he breathes in the scent of her, and the roses, and the gentle summer for as long as he can bear it.

 

Sixth year, Seunghoon and Jinwoo are still his only friends, and his mother asks him if he’s lonely and he says _of course not, mama,_ and he mostly means it. Seunghoon lets Jinwoo and Taehyun cheat off of him in Transfiguration, and they stay behind with him on Hogsmeade weekends after his dad kicks him out and won’t sign the form. Taehyun tries to make a potion that will transform Seunghoon’s handwriting into his father’s, so that they can forge his signature, but it just turns Seunghoon’s handwriting purple for a month, which Seunghoon ends up liking, anyway. It kind of becomes a minor fad among the lower years.

Taehyun begins to study Advanced Potions. He’s the only sixth year in the class, and the other students glare at him when he answers questions first, or at all. He wants to be brave, but he sees their fists clench, so he stays quiet, and earns his house no points. During his free periods, however, he sneaks down to the dungeons and mixes flower petals with deep-sea roots. The fire warms the water and the bubbles start to form, and Taehyun wonders if this could be beauty, more than magic.

The seventh years Slytherins find him then, in the dungeons, and they scald his hands so that he can’t use a stirring rod for the next few months. Seunghoon and Jinwoo don’t bother asking, and Taehyun is grateful, if a little bit sad.

 

They tear up his textbooks, the week before exams, and leave the pages scattered across his bed like inky leaves. Taehyun's hands are still burned, the flesh curling black and red. He quietly collects the pages, stacking them on his bedsheets in neat piles, as the rest of his year watches him, their eyes boring into his back like killing curses. He makes one stack for Transfiguration, and one stack for Astronomy, and one stack for Care of Magical Creatures, and one extra stack. He picks up these extra pages, a much smaller pile, and then he picks up his wand.

The fire leaves his bed untouched, but the remains of his textbook crumble into ash and dust, turning the bedsheets black and the air a sooty mess. His housemates press their hands to their mouths, coughing the grime from their lungs, and Taehyun, quietly, impassively, hands them his small collection of pages, one by one, and then, just as quietly, he leaves the dormitory.

He never does make the poisons he'd listed - that's Potions work far, far above his skill level just yet, but he notices that the whole of Slytherin house suddenly begin to drink from flasks at meal times, and when they pass him in the halls cling to the walls, as if the slightest brush of his robes might burn them.

"What did you _do_ ," Jinwoo asks, eyes wide, and Taehyun shrugs.

"Guess I'm just not very likable," he says, frowning exaggeratedly. Jinwoo agrees emphatically, and Taehyun swats him on the head, laughing. Something inside him, serpantine and cool, feels triumphant.

  

Taehyun and Jinwoo both get Ps on their Transfiguration NEWTs. Seunghoon does, too. They stare at him in astonishment, and he shrugs.

“You’ve been copying off me for years, and you’ve been failing for years. What did you expect?”

The Wasps don’t want Seunghoon; their rivals, the Arrows, however made him an offer the moment they hear. Seunghoon has accepted, either out of spite or excitement or both. He’s leaving for their training camp in Appleby first thing in the morning; Jinwoo and Taehyun have both promised to visit, and Seunghoon says he can’t promise them season tickets but he can give them his autograph. They both decline.

Jinwoo leaves on the Hogwarts Express, back to London and then to the island, where he’ll fish with his father and argue with mermaids. Taehyun will visit him for a month, and then it’s back to Hogwarts, where he’s got a three year Potions seminar to complete. He will learn how to cauterize wounds with tree sap and heal burning lungs with holy water. He will be his grandfather, and a Nam, and a Slytherin, and he will be proud.

A group of his housemates crowd near the entrance to the Great Hall. They’re all his year, but he’s never managed to learn their names, although he’s sure they know his. He remembers them holding his arms behind his back, pummeling his body near to brusing. He remembers the taste of dirt, and the warm Hogwarts grounds. He remembers the world flashing green, and he remembers the poisons he never brewed.

Taehyun smiles, and they flinch, and in the small, Slytherin part of his brain, he thinks, _good._

Taehyun turns away from them, and towards the halls of Hogwarts. The air is heavy with spells and dust and something older, something deeper than magic. Taehyun smiles once more, a bit softer now, and heads down towards the dungeons. His cauldron is warm, and it’s time to make magic.


End file.
